Narratives of Identity and Place

"Taylor's attention to the linguistic construction of the self as a work in progress ... allows us to see the value of the narrative-discursive approach, making the book a very useful text for the many people who come to narrative from discourse research or vice versa, or who just want to work out and work with the relation between the two. ... This is a very lucid text, its arguments pursued interconnectedly throughout, in a kind of dialogue with the women's stories. ... [Narratives of Identity and Place] offers a very good address to narratives as forms of discourse, an important, theoretically and methodologically consistent but under-explored approach that is developed here in a way that can be exemplary for other researchers. ... The detailed accounts of subtle aspects of self-narration lead to well-substantiated, complex readings that are not abuses of interpretive authority but that reach hidden aspects of subjectivity without resorting to psychoanalytic interpretive technologies." -- Corinne Squire, University of East London, UK, in Feminism & Psychology "The author has produced an excellent book, which draws from her already substantial body of work, and will no doubt become requisite reading to those of us engaged in qualitative research in fields ranging from psychology, gender studies and narrative analysis to all facets of human geography; including most pertinently for this readership, critical and urban geographies." - Breffni Lennon, University College Cork, Ireland, in Urban Geography Research Group "This book is very carefully written and is definitely reader-friendly. Although it deals with complex and contested theories around identity it does so with rigour and clarity, and could become part of an essential bibliography for courses in psychology, gender studies, narrative studies or critical and human geography." - Maria Tamboukou, Centre for Narrative Research, University of East London "This is a well-written and engaging book. Lively and succinct, it is a reference point in the study of place and identity for students in psychology and academic researchers." -- Ian Burkitt, Department of Social Sciences and Humanities, University of Bradford